


Abide with Me

by ashamedbliss



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War I, Character Death, Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Sad Ending, Survivor Guilt, War, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 05:56:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30084519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashamedbliss/pseuds/ashamedbliss
Summary: If I should die, think only this of me: that there’s some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England.World War I. Five deaths Arthur could have prevented, and one death he will not.
Relationships: Gwen/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 17
Collections: /r/FanFiction Trope Bingo Events





	Abide with Me

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [sugarloaf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themadmammoth/pseuds/themadmammoth), who did an outstanding job beta'ing this and making it so much better than it was. This is inspired by various works including _All Quiet on the Western Front_ by Erich Maria Remarque, and several poems such as Rupert Brooke's _The Soldier_ which is used in the summary.
> 
> Please heed the warnings and tags. Death is a main feature of this story and there is no happy ending. Also there is some period-typical racism and slurs used.

1.

The first person Arthur kills is his mother.

He doesn’t learn about this for a few years, of course, but maybe he should’ve picked up on the signs sooner. Uther often goes days without seeing him, leaving little Arthur with his nanny.

When he starts school in the village, though, the schoolmaster is the first to inform him.

“Pendragon? You call yourself a Pendragon? Your mother would never have let you grow up with handwriting that atrocious.”

Arthur lets his slate fall to his desk with a clatter, hanging his head. “Sorry, sir.”

“Boy? Do you hear me?”

“Yes sir,” Arthur mumbles.

“Speak up, boy! Or do you want the cane?”

He is not even five.

Arthur and the cane become well acquainted over the years that follow, often along with painful reminders of how his mother had been the best schoolmistress in the county, or how his father wasn’t the same man as he had been before Arthur was born and Ygraine had given her life for him.

After the canings, the other boys gather around, not to tease but to make things better, with jokes or laughter or impressions of the miserly Mister Kilgharrah. Percival, who stands a head above them all, and then Mordred, who looks so sickly that it’s a miracle he’s even able to make it to school. Leon, the wisest of them all, and Gwaine, who was the only one who ever ended up with more canings than Arthur.

And then there is Merlin.

Merlin moves to the village when they are nearly fourteen, but they make up for lost time as he and Arthur instantly became best friends. Merlin’s father Balinor is one of the hands at the Pendragon farm and often drops Merlin off with Arthur while he works. Uther has long given up on forming a connection with Arthur, and so Arthur is more than happy to have company. They spend endless days running around the estate, climbing trees, flying kites, and gossiping about the girls who work in the big house. One of them is called Gwen, and Arthur is enamoured by her from the very first moment he lays eyes on her.

Merlin watches the smile grow across Arthur’s face each time he sees her, the way he trips over his words trying to say hello, and her doing the same. Arthur remembers the day they’d heard about the sinking of the Titanic, when Gwaine had run up from the village with a newspaper in his hand, fast as he always was. He’d relayed the news to Gwen as she had folded bedsheets, and they’d talked about escaping to America; of course, in their dreams, their ship doesn’t sink. They are sixteen and fearless. What could go wrong?

Another two blissful years pass.

Arthur likes to remember that final summer, those unblemished memories. He sneaks away to one of the hills surrounding the village with Gwen one warm evening, to kiss and make love, both just barely eighteen. He decides there and then that he’ll marry Gwen, even though she is a servant, even though she is black, because she has the kindest smile he’s ever seen. He doesn’t know how, but he’ll make it happen, he’ll make it work.

“I’ll be waiting, when you get back,” she’d said, smiling, trying not to cry.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

It is August 1914, and Great Britain has declared war.

* * *

2.

The village hall is rammed, an emergency meeting called by the vicar. _Who will go to war for this country?_ he asks in some kind of cruel jape, for surely God isn’t asking him to corral the young boys and men in front of him, surely God wouldn’t send His own beloved creations to the slaughter?

But the boys do not see it as that yet. They see adventure and a war won by Christmas, back in time for tea and medals.

Arthur knows already that he is going. His father will not sign the certificate he needs to stay on the farm and help with the harvest as an industrial worker.

Uther is willing to sign certificates to the other boys, though. Percival has been asked directly, for his strength, but Leon, Merlin, Gwaine, and even the runt Mordred could stay behind if they wanted, claim that they were required in the village in scheduled occupations.

Arthur stands alone in the audience, for he has no choice but to answer the call. _Your Country Needs You_.

Rather, his father does not want him.

“Better to die than be a coward,” Arthur announces to the silent room. He says this so that they do not focus on the tears in his eyes, brimming from eighteen years of neglect and being unwanted, his country the first to require something of him.

Merlin is the first to stand up, beside him, before he’s even finished his sentence. The look they share speaks words neither of them are brave enough to say, not yet. Mordred is next, on Merlin’s other side. Leon’s chair scrapes the floorboards as he stands, followed swiftly by Gwaine. Percival stands too, folding his massive arms over his chest, knowing that he most easily could have remained.

Slowly, most of the young men around the room stand. When Arthur gets back to the big house, Gwen is crying; Elyan had run back and told her what had happened, his certificate secure. Arthur promises to come home, asks her when has he ever broken his promises?

Arthur realises, as he lays in bed that night and stares up at the ceiling, that he’s responsible for them all now. They’re his to look after, regardless of the commission Uther has bought for him, that final, ironic parting gift. “You’ll go as an officer to finally bring some honour to this family,” he had snapped, their goodbye. He is the only one of their friendship group with a surname and lineage worthy of a commission, and Arthur hates himself for it.

No. He will look after them because it is he who they stood for. _Better to die than be a coward_. Arthur feels a coward all the same, because he would not go alone.

They are not immediately sent to the front line; that is reserved for the standing army, who have rushed to Europe in an expeditionary force to end this war nonsense quickly. Instead, they train. Arthur is sent to Sandhurst for a few months, to learn about Wellington and Kitchener, to study papers and field manuals and learn the specifications for each and every weapon in existence. Arthur watches the rain drive down the windows. He wants to be in France already, not stuck in another classroom learning about field manoeuvres. At least here, he does not get caned.

The other boys, who join the rank and file soldiers, are drilled in marching and shooting and folding the blankets on their beds properly. Arthur realises too late that he may never see them again.

They’re put into the 1st Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment. They are already in France fighting, and the village boys will be backfilling regular troops who have been injured, or worse. By some stroke of luck, Second Lieutenant Pendragon will be going to war as the platoon commander of the five boys he has grown up with. He finds this does not bother him, and the boys are not worried either; they trust Arthur implicitly.

“And you trust me with your lives?” Arthur nearly says. He is glad, eventually, that he didn’t ask that of them, because the answer would have been _yes_ anyway, and it would not have made what followed any easier.

The boys look different, with their shorn hair and ill-fitting uniforms. By the time they arrive in France, the trenches have already been dug, the battle of Messines having decimated both armies. The trenches are a veritable maze, and Arthur loses his way to and from the command post an embarrassing number of times. The soldiers who have been there longer, for whom this has been their whole career, jeer and laugh at the fresh meat, even with bags under their eyes and arms in slings.

None of them know how bad it will get.

But there are pleasant moments, also. None of them knew how boring war could be, when you weren’t being shot at or digging in with your eyelashes, face pressed into the mud as you lie as still as possible, hoping they will mistake you for a corpse.

We digress.

War is boring.

One evening, the shellfire from the German trenches is so bad, there is nothing that they can do except sit in their dug-out and play cards. Arthur still hangs around with the boys, knowing he should be drinking weak tea with the other officers, also knowing that every time he does this it could be the last he’s able to.

“Gwaine, stop cheating,” Leon mutters as he collects the cards in, Gwaine’s expression jubilant.

“Not my fault that none of you can play rummy,” Gwaine grins as Percival hands him his prize, a cigarette.

They have all taken up smoking, to some degree or another. Gwaine nearly chain smokes them. Mordred coughs violently every time he has one, but no one laughs at him. It helps to pass the time, makes for a good currency, and gives them the semblance of warmth.

Leon deals again, and Merlin’s smile is light. “I think your luck might just change, Gwaine,” he quips. His eyes slide to Mordred, flinching with every thud of a shell into the earth around them. Mordred grips his cards tightly in his fist, a glare on his face.

Mordred wins the next round, to everyone’s surprise except Merlin’s, who just claps him on the back. None of them have actually managed to work out Mordred’s age yet, but he certainly isn’t eighteen like the rest of them. He barely has to shave every two days, let alone every morning, so his prize instead of a cigarette is a small tin of corned beef.

“Bloody hell,” Arthur says, sitting up in his chair. “Where did you get that from?”

Merlin just smiles that secretive smile of his and taps the side of his nose. It drives Arthur mad, but he’s learnt better than to question it by now.

Another month rolls by. The mud grows hard under their feet, the puddles in the deteriorating No Man’s Land freezing over after each torrential downpour. They can see their breath clouding in front of their faces as they shiver in the dug-out. Arthur is issued a greatcoat befitting his officer privileges, made of a thick wool that nearly sweeps the floor. He immediately gives it to Mordred, the scrawniest of them all, and its size drowns him.

The inevitable happens.

They are ordered over the top.

Arthur swallows tightly, the whistle perched between his lips. It trembles slightly, but the boys and men around him are too inwardly focussed to take notice. The guns thunder from behind them, splintering and destroying the ground to their front in preparation for their assault. The sun creeps over the horizon, harbinger of dawn, and there’s not a cloud in the sky; it will be a lovely day, Arthur thinks, grimacing.

The whistle of the neighbouring platoon blows, and he forces the air through his, its shrill pitch piercing.

He scrambles up, pistol in hand, for his first proper look over No Man’s Land. It looks as if God himself has reached down and ploughed these fields, with barbed wire and dead horses and huge shell holes everywhere. Arthur moves of his own accord, encouraging his soldiers along, his voice hoarse as he screams. He trips on a piece of rubble, sees the wooden stake sticking out of the shell hole in front of him but can’t do anything to stop the momentum of his body falling down, down—

Arms grab him from behind. “Alright, sir?” Merlin asks, eyes wide but a small smile on his lips. “Send us a post card next time.”

Arthur shrugs him off, realising that Merlin has saved him but frustrated that he can be so chipper when surrounded by all this death and destruction. “Keep moving,” is what comes out of his mouth, and Merlin nods, knowing it’s as close to a _thank you for saving my life_ as he’s going to get.

It’s not the last time it will happen.

The officer commanding the company eventually orders them to fall back to their own trenches. Arthur channels his anger at the decision inward, conveying the order to his own soldiers, and they scramble back through the filth and blood to their defensive line, furious.

Arthur and Leon slide down into a large shell hole, filled with deep water, to get into cover from the German machine guns. A soldier floats face down on the surface, wearing Hampshire accoutrements and an officer’s greatcoat. With a glance to Leon, Arthur reaches down to the man’s soldier and rolls him over.

Mordred’s vacant blue eyes stare up at them.

Leon stares on as Arthur shouts for Percival, in the next shell hole over. “Get him back to our lines,” he says, voice detached, far away. “Merlin, Leon, provide covering fire where necessary.”

“He got tangled in barbed wire,” Percival says as he wrenches the boy free, the barbs stuck in his uniform and clothing. “Drowned. Terrible way to go.”

“I hope I go more quickly,” Leon says. Arthur shoots him a look at that, but a swift death is the best they can hope for out here.

Once back in their trenches, a stretcher party takes Mordred back to the support trenches, still wrapped in Arthur’s greatcoat. Arthur does not miss it; for a moment he wishes he’d never given it to Mordred, so that he couldn’t have tripped on it, too big for him, and fallen into that icy water.

But then he remembers how Mordred’s eyes had lit up, mouthing _thank you_ because he was too excited to voice it, Merlin beaming like a proud big brother at his side as he clutched the heavy wool between his hands.

That night, Arthur smokes cigarette after cigarette, trying to forget the sight of Mordred floating in the water.

Mordred is the first of them, but he is not the last.

* * *

3.

Christmas brings a reprieve from all of the death.

They do not know it now, but one day they will be subject of songs, stories, and advertisements on a picture box which hasn’t even been invented yet. For one glorious day, the guns fall silent, and they climb out of the trenches into No Man’s Land in an uneasy truce.

Arthur speaks in halting German to the fritz, the men they’ve been trying to kill for the last few months who now trade cigarettes with them. They play football, and Gwaine manages to twist his ankle bad enough that he’s sent back to casualty station. He grins as the stretcher bearers take him away.

“The ankle’s the least of his worries in hospital,” Leon murmurs to Arthur, and Arthur hums in agreement. Sickness spreads like wildfire in the field hospitals, and those soldiers who come back are often emaciated and weaker than when they left, if they come back at all.

“What a load of fucking bollocks,” Percival complains later in a rare outburst. He is using his knife to whittle at some wood he has found. Merlin shuffles his cards endlessly. Mordred’s bed has been stripped of its blankets to add to theirs, and they are considering doing the same to Gwaine’s if he’s not back within a few days. “We stop fighting for a day, and we’re expected to go back to killing them tomorrow, as if nothing has happened?”

Arthur lowers his head. He doesn’t have the heart to say _yes, of course – what did you expect?_

Leon passes around his cigarettes, German ones, and they all fall silent once more.

Gwaine joins them again to count in 1915 with a bottle of whiskey he managed to sweet-talk off a nurse. They are amused for a few days by his stories of the women in the hospital, nurses who give bed baths and touch you softly if you’ve been a good boy.

Arthur knows that some of it is fabricated; he isn’t sure quite how much (even a bath sounds made up right now) but he can’t quite bring himself to care. It puts a smile back on Merlin’s face, which had been missing since Mordred had died, and Gwaine has them enraptured with every yarn he spins.

“Haven’t you got Elena waiting for you back home?” Leon asks eventually, after he tells the story about the lonely Welsh nurse one too many times.

Gwaine grins wolfishly. “Of course I have. You should see some of the stuff she’s been writing to me.”

Arthur has not received as many letters from Guinevere as he would have liked; he suspects that his father may be interfering. He continues to write to her about his plans to marry her in Gretna Green, how Merlin and her brother Elyan will be their witnesses, how he can’t wait to get home and have a family with her, damn the consequences. He writes and he waits for her reply, often in vain.

“What about you, Merlin?” Gwaine asks after spilling the sordid details of his lover’s letters. “You had your eye on Freya, didn’t you?” Freya is the village’s nurse, a million miles away from the nurses of Gwaine’s fiction.

Merlin smiles, but it doesn’t quite touch his eyes. “I’m trying not to think about home too much,” he says, before taking another drag from his cigarette. “I want to focus on what’s here before me.”

Arthur doesn’t realise, of course, the weight behind Merlin’s words.

Leon smiles, fishing that weathered picture of Morgana out from his jacket pocket once more. Arthur’s cousin had married Leon the week before the war had been announced. Arthur watches as Leon thumbs at it; while he’s happy for Leon, he wishes vehemently that he had a photo of Guinevere to do the same with.

The good mood runs out soon enough.

One night, the shelling from the Germans is particularly heavy; the generals believe that the Germans are preparing for a new offensive. A few seconds of whistling warns them before their home explodes in a cloud of dust and smoke. One round out of so many has struck lucky.

Arthur blinks into the darkness to find Merlin on top of him, a human shield. “Merlin?” Arthur chokes.

“I’m here,” Merlin says, his words an anchor in the chaos. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Help me find the others.”

Percival is throwing aside chunks of concrete as they crawl out of the wreckage. Leon holds a bandage to his head, which bleeds heavily, tears sliding down his face.

“Where’s Gwaine?” Arthur barks. His ears are ringing and he can’t hear the men around him, spilling in from other sections and platoons to help in their search.

Someone puts their hand on Arthur’s shoulder and points towards the ground. A body is dragged from the rubble, its chest caved in, covered in grime and blood.

Gwaine is the second of them.

Arthur drops to his knees, unable to hear his own scream of “why?” leaving his lips. He swears and curses in silence, and his men watch on as their platoon commander slowly loses his mind.

This is not even the worst of it.

If only he knew.

Soon, though, they are given a distraction from the ringing in their ears and the heaviness in their hearts.

The Second Battle of Ypres is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it earns both him and Merlin some sick leave, and a curse because, well.

It’s the first large-scale use of poison gas in the war.

Arthur watches the green chlorine cloud roll towards their trench, mouth open in terror, frozen to the spot. “Bloody hell,” he mutters; not “get down!” or “hold your breath!” or anything that would have saved the lives of his men.

Once again, he wonders if he has doomed these men, if his entering this world via the death of another will follow him to the end of his days. He stares at the green cloud and waits to taste it, so that the men can be free of his curse.

Merlin tackles him to the ground, ramming a sodden cloth over Arthur’s face. “Close your eyes,” Merlin hisses in his ear as Arthur gasps into the cloth, which tastes and smells like a summer meadow, something he hasn’t experienced in nearly a year. He does not see Merlin, who does not wear such a covering as the gas descends upon them, but he hears the coughing and gurgling from men down the line, the cries for water.

“Don’t drink any water!” Merlin screams, holding a struggling Arthur down. The men do not pay attention to how he is immune to the gas. Instead, they fall to the ground like ragdolls, clutching at their throats and chests, tongues lolling from their mouths.

Arthur is released by Merlin, taking the cloth from his hands and holding it over his nose and mouth. The air is clear, and tears fill Arthur’s eyes as he looks up and down the trench, the bodies piled upon one another. He turns to Merlin, who looks equally distressed, hands on his head. He is glad for the cloth, not because it has saved his life, but that Merlin now cannot watch his bottom lip tremble as he stares at the men around him.

“They’re all dead,” Arthur manages.

“Leon,” Merlin whispers, gaze fixed over Arthur’s shoulder. Pushing Arthur aside, he wades through the corpses to reach Leon, who coughs and retches, propped against the side of the trench. “Leon, we’re here.”

Leon gasps up at them, eyes glassy, hands shaking violently. His skin is tinged yellow, and there is green foam at the corners of his mouth. “Tell Morgana--”

“That you love her, we will,” Merlin finishes, nodding his head enthusiastically despite the tears on his cheeks. “We will.” He clutches Leon’s hand until it goes limp in his.

Leon had wanted a quick and painless death; he had instead received the very opposite, for no good reason.

Arthur drops the cloth that Merlin had given him to the ground. “Next time, Merlin, save anyone other than me.”

Merlin does not have a protective cloth, but Arthur, blind with anguish and fury, cannot bring himself to question it.

The battalion is crippled figuratively and literally. They are sent back to Hampshire in the summer of 1915 for a month of rest and recuperation while its ranks are filled again. Besides Merlin and Arthur, Percival is the only one of their original group who survives; badly affected by the gas, he is sent to a military hospital for convalescence. Guinevere cries when she sees Arthur, wrapping her arms around him and not letting go for some time. Later, she frowns at the lice bites on his skin and the way his uniform hangs from him, promising to feed him plenty while he’s home.

Merlin ends up spending most of the month at the big house on the Pendragon farm, either working alongside his father in the fields or sitting next to Arthur silently. They listen to the birds, the quiet hubbub of village life, the absence of cannons booming in the distance.

Arthur elopes with Guinevere to Gretna Green, and Merlin volunteers to be a witness before Arthur even has the chance to ask him. Elyan, another worker on the Pendragon farm and Guinevere’s brother, makes up the second witness. Arthur spends the three days the trip takes avoiding thinking about the war and the horrors he must soon return to.

The night before the wedding, Arthur and Guinevere sleep in separate rooms, across the road from the chapel where they will be married. Arthur bunks with Merlin and Elyan, the latter of whom is walking with his sister around the tiny village, calming her nerves.

“What happens if I don’t come back?”

Arthur stares at the ceiling of this room, his favourite way to contemplate the questions he does not have answers to. Merlin lies beside him on the small bed, also examining the crumbling plaster.

“You’ll come back. I’ll make sure of it.”

Merlin’s words are said with such conviction that Arthur sits up, propping himself onto one elbow to look at Merlin. “How can you be so sure?”

Merlin meets his gaze with steel in his eyes. “Because I won’t let you die.”

Arthur swallows. “Merlin... I need you to tell me something, and I need you to not lie to me.” Merlin must know the question that Arthur is about to put between them, in the semi-darkness on the eve of his wedding. “Why did you not suffer when we were gassed?”

Merlin looks away to the ceiling. “Because I am magic.”

Arthur finds himself laughing; that bleak humour of the trenches has poisoned him, just like the gas, and followed him all the way to Scotland. Merlin watches him steadily as the laughter dies away.

“I’ve been able to do spells since I was a child,” Merlin explains carefully. “Dad and I lived far away from the village, where he taught me how to handle my magic, how to blend in with those who don’t have it, like you.” With these last words he meets Arthur’s eyes again.

“Why didn’t you save the others, too?” Arthur asks, falling back onto the bed, staring ahead blankly. He clasps his hands together over his heart, which aches for the brothers he has lost. “Mordred, Gwaine, Leon...”

“I can only do so much.”

Arthur looks back at Merlin, who rubs furiously at his eyes. “There’s...” Merlin sighs. His hands fall away. “There’s only so much I can interfere with fate. And each time I do, someone suffers for it.” At Arthur’s raised eyebrow, he continues. “You nearly impaled yourself on a stake in No Man’s Land; I saved you from it, and Mordred died.”

“No.”

“When that shell hit our dug-out, I could only save one person. I chose you. Gwaine died.”

“Merlin--”

“And with the gas...” Merlin says, voice broken. Arthur refuses to look at him, can’t, but he knows he’s crying. He’d know his tears anywhere. “I only had time to enchant one cloth. Leon--”

“Don’t do it again.”

Merlin looks to Arthur; Arthur can feel his gaze on his own pale face. “Arthur--”

“If you are given another choice, Merlin,” Arthur grinds out, swallowing down a sob. “Choose someone else. I led these men to war, I...” Sitting up suddenly, he puts his head in his hands. “My God, what have I done?”

“Arthur,” Merlin says again, but this time it’s more pity than sorrow. His hand is on his shoulder, warm through his shirt.

“There’s so much blood on my hands,” Arthur says, and for once he allows himself to cry. “Leon, Gwaine, and little Mordred.” The sobs wrack his body, and Merlin pulls him close, holding him as he too cries for the men they have loved and lost. Arthur tries not to make too much noise, knowing that Guinevere’s room is next to his and not wanting her to think the tears are about their upcoming marriage. He knows how difficult it will be for them both without his grief bearing down upon their newly minted union.

Later, when Elyan returns from escorting Guinevere back to her room, he finds Arthur curled up asleep with his head in Merlin’s lap. Merlin strokes his hair softly, murmuring quietly to him. His eyes meet Elyan’s, and Elyan nods.

Elyan has not seen the horrors of war, but is well acquainted with demons of his own. He takes the spare bed and leaves them to their anguish.

Arthur and Guinevere are married by dinner time the next day, and Arthur swears he hasn’t ever smiled so widely. He and Guinevere retire to their room too early for polite company, but neither Merlin nor Elyan mind, electing to explore the Scottish countryside around the village. Arthur is eager to consummate his marriage with Guinevere, holding her tight against his body for the first time in nearly a year. She cradles him like he might break apart in her arms.

“I want to have a baby with you,” he breathes into her sweat-soaked skin.

She pulls him closer in response.

They are only nineteen. This is the only peace that Arthur asks for in this world.

He should have known better.

* * *

4.

Finally, there comes a faultless death.

It is the Spring of 1916 when they learn that Percival has passed away. He never recovered from the poison gas, and while in hospital picked up tuberculosis, which he suffered from for nearly a year before he finally died. Like Leon had said back in 1914, when everything had been at the very least okay, Percival’s crippled lungs should have been the least of his worries.

“Isn’t it funny how none of us have actually been shot?” Arthur asks Merlin one sunny afternoon in May.

It is not funny at all.

“Fate,” is all Merlin can say. “Fate and destiny are something that even I can’t change.” He is waiting for Arthur to absolve him of the deaths of their brothers, not knowing that Arthur did so the moment Merlin had held him when he cried.

There is a large offensive being prepared for the height of summer. The regiment’s order of battle is modified, and Arthur and Merlin are nearly separated. Arthur, now Captain Pendragon, demands that he not be separated from now Corporal Emrys. Major Cenred King is the company commander and he agrees, mostly because he is fresh in, and now Arthur is one of the veterans of this war at twenty years of age.

Some things, it turns out, are funny after all.

Merlin and Arthur’s new battalion is held in reserve, so they are able to escape the stinking mud of the trenches for a few idyllic days. They receive extra rations – which is a sure-fire way of knowing that they will be sent over the top soon – and post from home.

Arthur beams as he reads his latest letter from Guinevere, and Merlin smiles in response. “Well?”

“She reckons any day now,” Arthur reads, eyes darting across the paper and Guinevere’s elegant scrawl. “She says she feels as big as a house, and the baby won’t stop kicking. Father has even given her time off work – imagine!”

He hopes that, if Merlin does imagine, it’s the good parts. Not the names Guinevere was called when her belly began to swell, despite the ring on her finger, despite the marriage certificate Arthur had made sure his father had seen and his insistence that she was called Mrs Pendragon.

“She says that Morgana is going to take her and the baby in until I’m back from the war.” He holds the letter to his chest, crumpling it slightly. “Freya thinks it’s a boy.”

Merlin looks up at Freya’s name, smiling while he plucks blades of grass from the ground. “Freya’s usually right about these things.” She has attended the birth of many of the village’s latest inhabitants. They try not to think how they are baby brothers or sisters to men who no longer exist.

“Just think,” Arthur says, looking up at the cloudless sky. “She’s probably had it already, with how late the post is.”

Three days later, Arthur is summoned by the company commander. Merlin is serving as orderly corporal, manning the wireless and making cups of tea in equal measure. Arthur stands at attention, jaw rigid. He has not been told to stand at ease. Merlin watches from a desk nearby, pretending not to eavesdrop.

“Arthur,” Major King says, this man who has barely known him two months. His dark eyes do not inspire trust. “We received a wireless from Uther Pendragon this morning.” Arthur bristles at the name. Cenred hums, looking down at the telegram in his hands. “Well. It seems that your servant Guinevere has died in childbirth.”

Arthur feels the ground drop out from beneath him, stomach plummeting down to earth.

“Wife.”

“Corporal Emrys?” Cenred asks, turning around to look at Merlin. Arthur stares straight ahead, numb. “I don’t remember asking you to speak.”

“Guinevere is...” Merlin clears his throat. “Guinevere was his wife, sir. They were married last summer.”

Major King flushes, turning and pointing at Merlin. “Corporal Emrys, that is enough.” He turns back to Arthur. “With this offensive coming up, I can’t get you back home. I, er, oh--” He peers down at the telegram, sneering. “The baby didn’t make it either. Probably better off that way.”

Merlin drops the handset he was holding. It clatters in the silence that follows.

“Well, Pendragon, anything to say?” Cenred says. “If not, you’re dismissed.”

Arthur’s grief swells within him. He can feel Merlin staring but is too tightly wound to even speak without tears pouring forth. Both his wife and child, dead. He barely manages a nod.

“Can’t believe someone let him marry a negro,” Cenred mutters to Merlin, tearing the telegram in two. He turns his back. Arthur flushes, cheeks filling with heat, hands curling into fists.

Merlin stands up, chair toppling backwards. “Sir, that’s not appropriate--”

“Corporal Emrys, question me again and I will have you put up in front of the firing squad,” Cenred barks, and Merlin presses his lips into a thin line, glaring. Arthur trembles with rage, grinding his teeth together so hard they could break.

They both know there is not enough spare men to be putting experienced ones in front of the firing squad, but it does not make the threat any emptier.

The company commander turns to Arthur. “Marrying a negro, really, Pendragon? I had thought better of you. Well at least she’s dead, and the child’s been spared of the misery that would’ve been its life.”

With one hand, he grabs Cenred’s jacket, with the other, he punches him square in the nose.

Cenred cries out, his mouth and chin instantly covered in blood. Arthur raises his fist for another hit but Merlin grabs at his arm. “Arthur, leave it,” Merlin commands, looking around nervously. “One you can get away with. Two will get you killed.”

Arthur glances at Merlin, a challenge.

“You’re not dying on my watch,” Merlin reminds him. “Let’s go check your hand out.”

Merlin escorts him from the bunker, emerging into the bright sunshine once more. All around them, soldiers unload provisions and ammunition for the offensive; no one takes notice of Arthur being dragged through the lines by a corporal. Arthur is sat down back in their platoon’s current location, still in the rear trenches, upon a stack of crates of medical supplies. “Let me look.”

Arthur lets Merlin prod at his knuckles; he doesn’t know whether it hurts or not, doesn’t care. “You’re lucky you didn’t break your hand.” Merlin starts digging through a box next to him. “I think a bandage, and maybe a protective spell to ward off infection, as you’ve cut the--”

“You’re all I have left.”

Merlin falls silent, still holding Arthur’s hand in both of his. He gently strokes his thumb over the parts of his fingers not covered in blood. “Arthur, I’m so sorry.”

Arthur exhales, a long sigh. “There is nothing to live for now except you.” He closes his eyes and thinks of Guinevere. He thinks of Morgana and Freya, how they couldn’t save her. He wonders if his father would have refused to lend his car to make sure she could get the hospital when the birth became difficult. _The child is an abomination_ , he can almost hear Uther say.

“Yet another two deaths at my hand.”

Still holding his hand, Merlin dresses the wound as Arthur retreats further and further inside himself. Arthur waits for him to say something about fate and destiny, but he doesn’t.

In fact, Merlin’s words surprise him.

“If you don’t want me to save you this time, I’ll understand.”

Arthur looks up then, finally meeting his eyes for the first time since his life had come apart at the arrival of that telegram. “Merlin,” Arthur starts, but doesn’t finish.

“No, no, it’s okay. I...” Merlin shrugs his shoulders. “I wouldn’t want you to suffer just so you can hang around for me.”

“My only redemption will be dying by your side.”

Merlin nods, a finality to it.

* * *

5.

On 1st July 1916, nearly 60,000 British men are sent to their deaths during the first day of the battle of the Somme.

Captain Arthur Pendragon plans to be one of them.

The whistle is perched between his lips once again. He looks up and down the trench to the soldiers who have never done this before. Merlin is at his side, his runner for this jaunt into No Man’s Land. Arthur can see the way his magic rolls over his skin, now so finely attuned to it, shimmering in the summer air.

“Don’t use your magic on me, Merlin,” Arthur had said earlier, as Merlin helped him prepare his orders for the platoon. “Save as many of the men as you can. They have wives and children to go home to.”

Now, Merlin gives him a terse nod.

Arthur barely checks to see if his pistol is loaded.

The time comes, and Arthur blows his whistle, he and Merlin surging into the wasteland before them. Men to his left and right advance forward in file and for once they make progress, Merlin’s magic protecting the entire platoon save for one.

A burst of gunfire rattles too close to them. Arthur is struck in the leg and collapses to the earth. He drags himself forward into the dead ground as pain shoots through him, pressing his hands to the slowly seeping bullet wound. Merlin drops to the floor beside him a few moments later, taking cover behind a fallen tree.

Arthur laughs darkly. “Not lucky enough,” he says, prodding at the wound. “I suppose one of us had to get shot at some point, right, Merlin?”

He turns to Merlin who lies on his side, clutching at his chest, blood flowing thick and fast between his fingers. Merlin’s voice is a rattle. “I’m sorry.”

Arthur lurches towards him, clamping his hands down over the wound. “Don’t you dare,” he says to Merlin. Merlin’s lips are crimson, and he coughs up blood. “Not like this, Merlin. You were meant to be magic, God damn it.”

“I am,” Merlin rasps, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Got distracted when you got shot.”

Arthur shakes his head. “Merlin, look, we--”

“Arthur,” Merlin says, and Arthur releases his hold on Merlin’s chest. With sudden strength, he clutches at Arthur’s uniform, pulling him closer, eyes golden. “Don’t keep us waiting.”

Merlin’s death is the final one that Arthur could have prevented.

He will not allow himself another.

* * *

+1

I think, reader, you know what comes next.

Arthur presses a kiss to the middle of Merlin’s forehead, gently closing his eyelids. “I’ll see you soon,” he whispers, tenderly laying Merlin down on the ground. The bullets still zip over his head, cracking in the air around him, into the wood of the tree at his back.

He takes his time, arranging Merlin’s limbs so that he appears to be in peaceful repose. His arms are crossed over his chest, covering the wound that continues to ooze blood, no longer being pumped around Merlin’s body. Arthur checks that his identification discs are still looped around his neck and tucks them safely back inside his shirt.

“You were the best of us.”

Arthur wishes he had more to say, but knows that he will have all the time he needs to tell Merlin those words in Heaven. So many other people wait for him there, too: Guinevere and their tiny baby, Leon, Gwaine, Percival, and young Mordred.

His mother will be there. Will she be proud of him, once she tells him all he has done?

He does not dare to think that he will be sent to Hell instead, knowing that he would otherwise cower here for eternity.

Arthur tries to stand from behind the tree, but his leg buckles under him. He grits his teeth and forces himself to his feet, the pain making him sweat.

There is nothing left for him here, in this muddy field somewhere in France, or maybe Belgium, in this place where his loved ones are not. He is the last remaining survivor of those young boys who wanted to be men, who wanted to play at soldiers and have a jolly good adventure while doing so.

He stumbles forward.

The machine guns rattle on in the distance, artillery booming and thundering overhead. Some of the rounds land close, splashing in puddles of blood draining into the earth. Without Merlin’s magical protection, the rest of his platoon has been slaughtered.

“Come on, then,” Arthur says quietly. He raises his hands into the air, dropping his pistol. This is surrender, but not in the way that means his life will be spared.

He wants his life to be taken.

He has done too much harm with it.

Arthur lurches forward, growing impatient. A shell explodes near him, the artillery famously dropping short, but not short enough. He is covered in a shower of dirt but still he does not die. “Come on, then!” he repeats, this time a shout, a taunt, an act of supplication.

His prayer is answered in the form of a bullet straight through the head.

For all his sins, Arthur Pendragon had the quickest death of them all.

**Author's Note:**

> "Better to die than be a coward" is the motto of the Royal Gurkha Rifles and does not belong to me.
> 
> This fills Big Why?!; My God, What Have I Done?; Tranquil Fury; Rasputinian Death; Sole Survivor; and Despair Event Horizon on my trope bingo card. 7/25.


End file.
